【Sairen (Psyren)】Beloved action manga about a mysterious apocalyptic world!!

Sairen (Psyren), stylized as PSYЯEN, is a manga series written and illustrated by Toshiaki Iwashiro. The manga was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump from December 2007 to November 2010, with a total of 16 volumes. Psyren was officially released in English under Viz Media.

Many volumes from Psyren have made it into Japan’s best-selling lists thanks to its thrilling action scenes, clean art style and great character development. Psyren is considered Toshiaki’s most famous work to date and Toshiaki’s student Tamura Riyuuhei later created the popular manga Beelzebub.

A light novel written by SOW, titled Psyren: Another Call was released on September 2010. This includes many short stories about the characters in Psyren. The second volume was later released on March 2011, which told the future stories and lives of the characters.

The story of Psyren started with the main protagonist Ageha Yoshina. He had went looking for a gang of thugs and picked a fight with the leader.

Yoshina was a normal looking guy but he was strong and exceled in fighting. He beat the thug that was double his size and forbid him from following a girl. It turned out that girl was from Yoshina’s school and she asked Yoshina to beat up that thug for her. Yoshina would solve anyone’s problem for 10.000 Yen but in truth, he was always looking for a reason to run wild.

Yoshina thought that the world was ending, with human activities gradually damaging the earth and large numbers of people mysteriously went missing all over the country. He couldn’t see his future so Yoshina just lived recklessly.

After the fight, Yoshina was on his way home while he heard a ringing sound from the nearby payphone. When he got curious and answer the call, a cloaked figure appeared out of thin air, surrounding by smoke.

It seemed that cloak figure was the one making the call. He disappeared in an instant and a red calling card was left at the payphone. The card had an unknown symbol and the word “Psyren” written on it.

The next day at school, Yoshina was thanked by the girl that had hired him to beat up the thug. The girl – Madoka, was really cute and Yoshina wanted to impress her. She asked Yoshina to find her cat and he happily agreed.

Right before class, a long haired girl named Amamiya Sakurako stepped in. Everyone in class called her the “ice queen” because she refused to talk and asked people to leave her alone. She would always say “Psyren is coming and when he does, neither you nor I will be able to stop him”.

However, Yoshina remembered that they were friends back in elementary school. Amamiya was really bright and popular, she even help cheer Yoshina up when his mom passed away.

When Yoshina went out the school yard, he incidentally saw Madoka and her friends laughing while running away from the trash pile. He dug up the trash and found out that they had dumped Amamiya’s wallet there to bully her. Inside her wallet, Yoshina found a red calling card with the word “Psyren” that was identical to his.

Yoshina returned the wallet to Amamiya and asked her about the Psyren card. She tried to deny the existence of the card and was about to leave. That was when a piercing sound started to ring but only Amamiya can hear it. She turned to leave while Yoshina called out to her, saying he would help with whatever was bothering her for 10.000 Yen. Amamiya said “Save me”, and suddenly vanished. Ever since that day, she has been missing.

After Amamiya went missing, Yoshina often thought about her. His friends brought up the story of an urban legend named “Psyren” and told Yoshina to ask a guy from the school’s Occult Club.

The guy – Okumura, then told Yoshina about the large number of people that went missing without a trace. The majority of victims had nothing in common and the police couldn’t do anything because there was no lead. However, a rumor has been spreading on the internet like wild fire that the one behind these disappearances was a secret society called Psyren. They were rumored to gather people who were sick of the current world and lead them to “paradise”. Their leader was a mysterious figure named Nemesis Q.

The description of Nemesis Q matched the cloaked figure Yoshina has seen when he picked up the call at the payphone. Okumura then told Yoshina that a famous millionaire in the occult world has offered the prize of 500 million Yen to anyone who could uncover the truth behind Psyren. Not only that, a real and unused Psyren calling card could be sold for over 5 million Yen. Many tried to claim the prize and all died in various accidents.

Yoshina wanted to cashed his Psyren card in for money but he thought of Amamiya and how she asked for help. Finally, he decided to use his Psyren card instead, to find Amamiya.

Yoshina went to the payphone and inserted his card in. A female voice greeted him and told him that “Your world is now connected”. The woman proceeded to ask Yoshina tons of questions in order to commence the “immigration examination”. After over 60 trivial questions, the woman asked Yoshina about his tendencies to look for trouble as a means to drown out the sadness from his mom’s death.

Yoshina felt like he was being watched and tried to run away. The woman yelled at him and they argued over the phone. At the final question of whether or not he would like to go to “Psyren”, Yoshina got angry and smashed the button that indicated “Yes”. He was determined to find out the truth about Psyren.

The next day, two suspicious guys came to Yoshina’s school and said that they were police.

However, Yoshina’s friend told him that their notepad was a well-made fake and that those people weren’t police. Yoshina went to confront them and they attacked him to try and find his Psyren card.

They said that Yoshina knew nothing of the card’s true power nor meaning. “Psyren is no secret society”, one of the guys said, “It is an entire world”. Yoshina tried to fight his way out when he suddenly heard a piercing sound. Unknowing to him, the strange symbol carved on his card was actually an eye. And the eye was opened.

Yoshina wanted to open his phone to call for help but he accidently answered a call instead. The ringing sound he heard was coming from that call – a call from Psyren’s mysterious Nemesis Q himself. The moment he answered the call, Yoshina was transported into a new world, the world of Psyren.

Will Yoshina be able to find his way out of Psyren? What is the mystery behind the urban legend of Nemesis Q?